Commitment to Our Future:
The reverse of "live" is "evil." Anything that does not foster life, foster love is "evil." When all we do is take, see what we can get, separate ourselves from one anther, and disown the results of our thoughts, feelings and choices, we are evil.
Life invites us to take a pledge for 2013 and beyond to live fully, to engage with life and others with love - care, understanding, respect, and responsiveness. Life invites us to commit to leading as love which is leadership in service to life - Universal Leadership.
Universal Leadership is an openness that is empty of preconceptions and conditions and full of possibility and potential. Universal Leaders act from and foster our unity. Common ground and deep care for the greatest good are established in our inherent unity that is love, not in agreement around an external issue. We only unite with others from the inside. Universal Leaders honor our totality of being as human and spirit. Universal Leaders call forth the human spirit that is in each of us to express. Universal Leaders make an unconditional commitment to consciously create a future that serves life. Universal Leaders are consciously awake, spiritually aware, and psychologically integrated.
Universal Leadership is our personal choice. The ultimate paradox is that we can change the world only through individual change of what's inside: our thoughts, feelings, beliefs, and values of how we view and interact with life. Violence, exploitation and oppression will continue until we end the war within, the battle to suppress the truth of the heart: our connection and unity as human beings and with all of life.
In this season of great joy that brought us deep sorrow, may we recognize that Newtown is showing us both our polarities and our unity and so recognize both our individual and collective responsibility in creating our world. May this be the blessing and gift of all who died or suffered in this and all other human-made violence and catastrophes and natural disasters of recent years. May Newtown truly bring us a "New-town", a new life, a new way of being.
As 2012 is ending let us start anew, full of possibility, refreshing the canvas of our lives. In our rebirth, let us celebrate, be grateful, and honor life. In our rebirth, let us celebrate, be grateful, and honor that we are the only species on earth with the capacity to make conscious choices and know that we are the creators of our experience. In our rebirth, let us celebrate, be grateful, and honor that we are an expression of spirit in all that is. In our rebirth, let us consciously live the truth of our being, the truth of love.
As Universal Leaders we sense an opening into which love can be brought forth. We are ready. Now is the time. We are the ones to midwife love. Let us trust the goodness in life and allow ourselves to be moved by love, the unity within. Then, and only then, will there be peace on earth.
Will we make this ultimate commitment? Will we let our lives, our hearts, speak? Will we bring light to the world on this day of the longest night of darkness? Will we say yes to truth, the light, the movement of love that we are?
"I lead by word and deed simply because I am here doing what I do.
The power for authentic leadership is not found in external arrangements but in the human heart. Authentic leaders in every setting, aim at liberating the heart, their own and others', so that its power can liberate the world.... External reality does not impinge upon us as an ultimate constraint: if we who are privileged find ourselves confined, it is only because we have conspired in our own imprisonment... We make the world what it is by projecting our spirit on it, for better or for worse. If our institutions are rigid, it is because our hearts fear change; if they set us in mindless competition with each other, it is because we value victory above all else; if they are heedless of human well-being, it because something in us is heartless as well.
We all can make choices about what we are going to project, and with those choices we help grow the world that is. Consciousness precedes being: consciousness, yours and mine, can form, deform or reform our world. Our complicity in world-making is a source of awesome and sometimes painful responsibility - and a source of profound hope for change. It is the ground of our common call to leadership, the truth that makes leaders of us all."
Let Your Life Speak.
Parker Palmer
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Lucira Jane Nebelung is the Founder & Principal of Leading as Love.
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